


Fires

by cleflink



Category: Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Loss, Memories, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:25:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleflink/pseuds/cleflink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the final battle, Baerd contemplates  the losses he's suffered and the friend he has to say goodbye to again. Genfic<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fires

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Irmelin

 

 

The fires were still burning.

Baerd sat alone on a low hill overlooking the empty battlefield, his knees pulled up to his chest and a bottle of wine lying unopened in the grass beside him. A light breeze washed over him from the direction of Senzio, ruffling through his too-long hair and sending the distant fires to dancing against the black sky.

The others had been here earlier; Alessan, Catriana, young Devin, the Duke, Erlein. They'd stood together in silence for a long time after the fighting had stopped, staring at the decimated remains of two invader armies and wondering at what had happened this day, what all their hopes and dreams had finally accomplished. It had been a hard thing to come to grips with.

Everyone drifted away eventually, inexorably drawn into the swirl of giddy delight that had flooded Senzio on this, the Palm's first real night of freedom in nearly two decades. Even Alessan, his Alessan, hadn't stayed much past the fires being lit. Baerd didn't begrudge him that. Alessan was the hero of the Palm this day - and likely would be for many days to come - and he'd earned himself at least one night of respite from the constant pressure of being the youngest son, the last hope of a nation that had already given up all hope. And Alessan had Catriana now, to hold and steady him, and though Baerd had never expected such a thing in all their long travels together, it didn't take a wise man to see the rightness between them.

Alessan had looked back at him, once, as he'd made to return to the city, hand in hand with Catriana and half-turned towards the darkness even as his feet were heading towards the light. Baerd had waved him off with a crooked smile and a forgiving nod. He wasn't yet ready to leave.

The funeral pyres were still burning.

Naddo was burning with them.

There hadn't been any fires the last time Naddo had left him. Light after dark had been quickly forbidden in the province known as Lower Corte, and Baerd had soon grown to prefer the pitiless blackness of night as it accompanied him on his lost wanderings through a city that had once been his home. Walking abroad after dark was punishable by death in the early years after Deisa, but Baerd was fifteen in the year Tigana fell, too young to fight and too old to forget. So he walked, and raged at his own impotency in the darkness.

His sister worried for him, he knew, but he could no sooner stay in at nights than believe his tongue when it named his home Lower Corte. There was just too much weighing on him for Baerd to find solace in the hollow warmth of his small bed. Talking with Naddo helped, sometimes, and the two of them cleaved together in the aftermath of Brandin's hate, two too-young boys who suffered for having survived the deaths of their fathers.

But Naddo left before long, as some small part of Baerd had feared he would, and the betrayal of it cut like a knife that left Baerd feeling cold and lost and as hurt as he had been when the first tower had fallen.

It felt like he walked the entire length of Avalle that night, his footsteps leaden and a painful, tight feeling the back of his throat when he thought of the look on Naddo's face when he'd told them. Of what might have been on his face when Baerd refused to turn and say goodbye. The wind was cold on Baerd's face as he walked, freezing the tears he couldn't curb and painting lines of lonely fire down his bruised cheeks.

Baerd stumbled through the scattered remains of once-graceful towers and broken sculptures, feeling the ache of the contusions left by the Ygrathan soldiers and wondering why he'd thought Naddo would stay. When there was nothing left of Tigana, of home, but tumbled masonry and sad, broken people clinging to a forgotten past.

And so Baerd sat alone among the fallen towers, head in his hands as he wept for the empty remains of his home and the loss of the only friend he'd had left. A friend he hadn't said goodbye to. A friend he had readily expected never to see again.

One of Ducas' men staggered by along the crest of the hill, weaving drunkenly on his feet and clutching a mostly empty tankard in one hand. A wide grin split his scarred face as he caught sight of Baerd, ale spilling down his wrist in wide rivulets when he raised his arm with an exuberant shout. Baerd returned the raucous greeting with a nod and a faint smile, though he made no move to join the other in his merriment. The man stood there for several confused moments, blinking owlishly at Baerd and swaying unsteadily on his feet before reeling off in search of Triad only knew what, and leaving Baerd alone in the silence.

Which was fine. Silence had been all he'd had to call his own for many, many years.

He'd carried on without Naddo. Tried at first to act as though nothing had changed, then, when all that did was make Dianora frown worriedly, as though he'd got over the hurt of it. The soldiers on the streets were no more unkind to him than they had ever been, tormenting him at regular intervals and treating him the bulk of the time as though he were invisible. Baerd didn't mind. He was fifteen and his friend was gone and he didn't really care much for anything at all anymore.

He relied on Dianora more than ever in the spring and summer after Naddo left, taking guilty comfort in her soft, sad eyes and her soft, caring body. And he stayed because he loved her, more fiercely than he'd ever thought he could love anything since the day Brandin of Ygrath had marched into Tigana and destroyed his world. But even she couldn't fill all the emptiness inside him, couldn't mend the space in his heart that he'd lost the night Naddo had left and he hadn't said goodbye.

And then he saw the riselka. And did what he'd known he'd have to ever since he got beaten within an inch of his life and Naddo had gone without him. It was painfully hard to leave his sister, so much so that Baerd almost wished there was a place for him at her side in this broken little corner of the world. But Naddo had left, and Baerd was beginning to realize that, even if he stayed, there was nothing he could do or say to make things right again. Not for any of them.

And so he left as well, shouldering a tattered pack stuffed with a few loaves of bread and a fistful of silver pushed into his unwilling hands by his no-nonsense Dianora, stealing out into the darkness faster and farther than he'd ever gone before. Looking for Alessan, the last Prince of Tigana. Looking for something to believe in again.

And maybe, just maybe, looking for a lost friend he owed a goodbye to.

Baerd sighed, shifting in the cold grass and resting his chin on his bent knees. He'd thought often of Naddo as he'd traveled across the years with Alessan, wondering what had happened to his friend and whether he ever thought of Baerd in return. There had always been the secret hope that they'd find each other one day, but Baerd had never really believed it, never really thought he'd be lucky enough to receive the grace of the gods that way. Naddo had become another of his ghosts, a sad reminder that walked with him in the darkness and shamed him with its silence.

And then Naddo found him.

He had hardly known what to think that night in the bar, when one of his most closely guarded regrets stepped up and blinked at him with a painfully tremulous smile. Naddo was shorter than he remembered, and far too thin, pale skin stretched tight over muscles grown lean and strong - a man where Baerd had known a boy.

But it was definitely Naddo, and that meant everything in the world.

"Naddo?" he'd declared, incredulous, and Naddo had nodded, tears in his eyes and delight in his smile.

Baerd didn't quite know how he'd ended up with Naddo's arms wrapped around his shoulders, his own hands fisted tightly in the back of Naddo's shirt while a wild-looking group of men shouted cheers and well-wishes at the pair of them, but couldn't find it in himself to mind. Alessan had smiled, softly pleased, and Baerd had blinked away tears to see the same expression on Devin's face, and Rovigo's and Sandre's, all of them truly happy for him in this moment of unexpected reunion.

It didn't take Devin's skills at observation to know what the Senzians in the bar thought of their display, but Baerd didn't find himself at all bothered by their sly, insinuating grins. He even took a certain perverse amusement in following Naddo up to his room as the bar closed down for the evening, deliberately smug expression positively daring anyone to make a comment.

They spent the night sprawled across the foot of Naddo's bed, sharing stories and a bottle of Astibar blue they'd snagged from behind the bar on the way up. Baerd couldn't keep a ridiculous grin off his face, but was mollified by the fact that the look on Naddo's face was very nearly as foolish. And for one night, he figured he was allowed a little bit of childishness.

He told Naddo of tracking down the Prince and of long years plotting and planning for a way to change the Palm for the better. Naddo told him of drifting from job to job across the Palm, in Asoli and Astibar and Certando, and of falling in with Ducas in the mountainous highlands of Tregea. Baerd stuttered an apology for that last night and Naddo's smile was shyly hopeful as he told Baerd that Alessan said he'd spoken of him. Baerd acknowledged it with a grave nod, grinned at the uncomplicated awe pinking Naddo's cheeks, and wondered at how easy this was when it had been years and lifetimes ago when they'd last seen each other.

It had been a lot like coming home, Baerd thought, not in the same way it would be to go back to Avalle now that it really was Avalle again, but in a quiet, contented sort of fashion that went a long way to soothing some of the ache in his heart.

Which had only made it that much harder to see Naddo fall in this very spot with a Ygrathen arrow buried in his chest a scant few hours ago.

The massive pyres were little more than sooty orange smudges in the darkness now, blindingly bright against the night sky. They would burn all night, Baerd knew, fueled by the bodies of the men who'd fought and died this day in defiance of the fate the gods had set for the Palm thus far. It had taken most of the afternoon and fully half the remaining men to gather up all the bodies, uneven mounds rising hurriedly in the rising summer heat in the wake of the realization that they'd never be able to bury so many. The pyres had been Sandrei's idea. Baerd wasn't really surprised. The former Duke of Astibar was nothing if not practical.

It was getting cold on the hillside. Baerd reached absently for the bottle of wine next to him, wondering if he'd ever get used to the regret that victory always seemed to bring. Because now Tigana was free but Naddo was gone. And Baerd hadn't said goodbye this time either.

 _When we return to Tigana_ , Naddo had said that first night, eyes bright with wine and giddy joy, _You can build the towers and I'll fill them with sculptures just like your father taught me._

 _Of course_ , Baerd had replied, strangely, uncomplicatedly content for no reason whatsoever, _We'll give the world something worth remembering again. Together._

It was a good memory, a smiling Naddo and a shared bottle of wine, and Baerd couldn't help a wistful smile of his own that he and Alessan hadn't looked harder for red-haired Ducas and his ruthless outlaws in the hills of Tregea. The time they'd had together hadn't been nearly enough.

Baerd got to his feet with a sigh, brushing loose grass off his trousers as he offered a one-handed salute to the glowing fires.

"Triad guard you on your journey," he said formally, images of a quiet grin and a too-thin face making him smile almost despite himself. "Until we meet again."

And he turned away, pulling the cork on the wine bottle as he made his way leisurely up the hill towards Senzio. Alessan would be wondering where he was, and it was high time he joined in the celebrations.

Behind him, in the darkness under the stars, the fires were still burning.

 

 

 


End file.
